Observed Near-Inertial Waves Trapped in a Propagating Anticyclonic Eddy

Abstract

Abstract Near-inertial waves (NIWs) trapped in a propagating anticyclonic eddy (AE) are investigated along the eddy path at three areas spanning 660 km by using two mooring arrays and a cruise transect. In the upstream area, the reconstructed three-dimensional structure reveals that NIWs are concentrated within the eddy core with wave current amplitudes exceeding 0.2 m s−1; vertically, due to the critical layer effect caused by eddy baroclinicity, NIWs are trapped at depths around 200 and 315 m with frequencies estimated to be ω1 ≈ 0.918f and ω2 ≈ 0.985f, respectively. After the AE propagates southwestward for hundreds of kilometers, the NIWs of frequency ω1 are still detectable inside the AE, while NIWs of frequency ω2 are absent because of the equatorward migration of the AE on a beta plane. Meanwhile, the wave kinetic energy downstream is trapped closer to the eddy center in radial direction, with the wave amplitude decaying roughly in a Gaussian form along the eddy radius, and becomes more homogeneous in the azimuthal direction, showing a more regular trapping form in the three-dimensional view. Investigation on wind shows that trapped NIWs are likely to be generated by a typhoon but less affected by the wind during the eddy passage time. By an energy analysis, we find that enhanced wave dissipation near the critical layer is roughly balanced by the energy transfer from mean flows, and therefore the trapped wave kinetic energy is largely conserved during the long-distance migration.